Tomorrow, Tomorrow!

Do feel free to sing the title as if from the musical "Annie."

Right, tomorrow morning I'll get this done. The presentation is pretty much sketched out, the slides are pretty much done, and the brain is pretty much finished with this all. I've done my thing where I've left the nitty gritty to the last minute, but I hate preparing for stuff like this and much prefer to talk about it with people, think about what I want to do, write a basic outline, and then have it work out fairly naturally. Unlike many of the other presentations I've gone to, my supervisor stressed that she didn't want me going over the entire thesis. She is fairly different from other supervisors that way. My friends have tended to provide very detailed overviews of their entire paper, while I'm going to present about eight slides:

• Intro: my name, my topic, thanks yous to all there, my research question and what made me want to do this work. My main questions was about how social sciences and humanities are connected. My two main interests are literature and law. I think something that ties these areas together are the use of narratives. Law is about stories (what we can do, what we can't do, what we can expect in various contracts, what is being said we did, and who we are under various legalisms). Literature is also about stories. There is a relationship between these different stories. And law says some very specific things about WHO First Nations women are under the law, so I wanted to see what that translated into within texts.
  
• Title: "'How Should I Eat These?' With Your Mouth, Asshole:" First Nations Women's Literature Responds To Colonial Discourse. Everyone is interested in what the title is from and why I used the word asshole. Great little chat as the title is from Queen of the North by Eden Robinson, and the story really ties together all sorts of things I love about this research in terms of responding via literature rather than responding directly, creating a conspiracy between the reader and the subject, and cutting the colonizer from the communication. The actual quote is an exchange between this fellow Arnold and this woman Karaoke, although her reply is not verbalised. Arnold is convinced he can 'other' Karaoke and position her as some Pocahontas/Indian Princess myth for his consumption (much like his consumption of the fry bread at the fundraising booth). He keeps asking her these pointed questions about what kind of an Indian she is, how does she make the bread, how to eat the fry bread and what he can spread on the bread and so on. She keeps replying with both verbal and non verbal answers. The quote is his one question and her non-verbal reply.
  
• Methodology: What I did was look at five authors and some of their work. I selected various literary forms (poetry, plays, novels) and saw how these authors in these different forms interacted with legalized notions of identity. I also examined their interviews to see how they talked about their own lives and how they encountered narratives of their subjectivity within texts in their lives. I also look at literary criticism, theory, mid-theorists, other authors, and various academics.
• Subjectivity/Narratives/Law: Legal narratives => Literary Narratives => Social Narratives => Legal narratives. This whole relationship between what we say about ourselves influencing what we expect from society (rights, protection, etc) influencing how law changes (or doesn't). Or in turn, how legal narratives influence what we say about ourselves, and our personal narratives influence what society believes us to deserve... etc.
  
• Theory: quick chat about theory and this little story I have about Art and multi-disciplinary theoretical approaches.
  
• Connections:

1. The authors talk in their interviews about various connections within the writing community. Specifically they note how their work does not stand in isolation; their writing is a reflection and interaction with what they read themselves, can contain dialogues with other authors, and ultimately is indicative of the politicization of their everyday lives when their everyday lives are governed by the Indian Act.
2. The authors also create connections within their texts. They connect their characters to the past and colonization (Dumont's poem Helen Betty Osborne states "could be about our grandmothers, beasts of burden in the fur trade" and Mojica's Marie portaged across Canada and then transformed into Contemporary #1). They draw connections between texts (ie: school textbooks and having to read out loud) and then use those connections to transform the experience (Lisamarie's school note being framed by her uncle). They also explore what happens when connections of community are missing (April and Cheryl unable to access family support). In articulating the bonds of family, the authors are creation their own connection to tradition, strength, and rejuvenation.
   

• Articulations, Challenges, and Transformations

1. First step is to fully articulate the damaging effects of binary sexual representations - clean and non-threatening or dirty and shameful. The main issues of naming and representation is that it has such a huge impact on ability to access protection and support (ie: sexual assault).
   
2. Challenge these sterotypes by responding (Lisamarie), reporting (April Raintree), writing (Dumont)
   
3. Transforming representations via conspiracies with the audience. This is done through the performance of Princess Pocahontas, the snippy comebacks of Lisamarie and Karaoke, and the erotic writings and poetry of Akiwenzie-Damm and Dumont.
   

• Conclusion: This research highlights an area of study that could further and explore the relationships between social narratives and law. Specifically, there is a wonderful space of influence between altering 'common' perceptions and altering legal subjectivities.
  

Okay, this just took me about three hours as I made my slides as I went *whoot!* See, all I had to do was explain everything to someone else. GO TEAM!

xoxo
jenn